A Post in Pictures - Trail Head or Tail

On a too hot Saturday in late March, my son spotted something moving stealthily just off a trail in Usery Mountain Park and said, "Look, it's...", and a friend and I suddenly became like two giddy tourists astounded at their good luck in finding a celebrity while visitng that celebrity's native city. We oohed and ahhed, exclaimed in delight, congratulated each other on our good fortune, and clicked our cameras just two feet or so from the notorious individual's face. Said individual was not pleased with our attention. He attempted to slink beneath a bush. When that only had us bending over him, he demanded we keep our distance with an all too famous signal, a solo instrumental of warning.

  It all began with a morning hike. A lot of good, strange, very dangerous things do begin that way, I find. We were having a grand time, because it's nature after all, and nature never ceases to be a celebrity to humanity, especially the farther we grow from it. Everything too was in bloom except the saguaros. There were plenty of cactus flowers, yellow budding bushes, and there was a breeze - thank God for that! Without it the weather would have been oppressive (yes, in March).

The best thing was that I discovered a new place in this state to love. (I'm proudly collecting those places like marbles in a jar since my heart expanded to fit Arizona about a year and a half ago.) True, I  regretted we were not back hiking South Mountain at first, but then on the gentle winding trails in Usery Mountain Park, I found the true beauty of the Sonoran Desert with all its plant life diversity, and I knew South Mountain couldn't rival it. And I found a couple of famous individuals that I really associate with the West. Actually make that three....uh, four.

One of them was this gracious gentleman. His friend kindly gave me permission to take his picture. He and the scenery both were very photogenic.

A Horse With No Name

Another was this odd fellow, Sauron Saguaro I called him - The One Eye.

Oooohh...scared you, didn't I?

But the one that really gave us chills of excitement was this one:

Can't see a bloomin' thing, can you? Well, if you peer very hard into the center of this photo, you'll find a diamond pattern. Look to the far middle left, and you'll see a pattern of white and black lines. It's a rattlesnake, my friends, and the black and white lines are the end of its tail, the rattle. I was never so thrilled in all my life to see one. I could have gotten a really good picture of this famous reptile, but I would have had to let him strike me. You can understand, I'm sure, how I might not have been so happy about meeting him at that point. 

It was only after he rattled at my friend and I a few times and moved into a very decisive position that we had the good sense to walk away. My friend's little girl had cried in real fear when we spotted our celebrity, and her father swiftly lifted her into his arms. I apologized for making such a fuss over the snake and promoting this fear, but my friend assured me by saying:

"Oh, she's only scared because I talked to her about snakes before we came and warned her to stay on the trail."

Huh. Talked to her kids about snakes, warned them to stay on the trail? I had done neither. The most I had said in concern before the hike was, "Honey, did we remember the hot dogs?"

Silly novice hiker.

I made up for it, though, by obsessively reminding my kids after that close encounter to stick near, stay clear of bushes, and not to let one pinkie toe stray from the path. I had to amend my motherly failure, and, by heaven, I did my duty as paranoid parental figure forthwith.

Good thing, too. We ended our hike and drove to our chosen picnic spot where we could cook those hot dogs I was so solicitous about before our adventure. When we merrily emerged from our vehicles, an uneasy middle-aged man in the truck next to us pointed and said, "Be careful. There's a rattlesnake under that table."

No way! Rattlesnakes appearing twice in a hike to the same people? But sure enough. He was enjoying the cool concrete in the shade, and I got this really great picture of him for you.

Of course, the commonsense fellow in the truck watched us parade about the table for our shot, and his eyes plainly spoke what he thought about our mental deficiencies.

"You know what they say, don't you?" our grey-headed sage asked, not even a foot of his dangling near the potentially treacherous desert floor from his open cab door. "Where there's one, there's usually two."

Yes, but we weren't too bothered. We'd already seen the other one. Still, after snagging this prize picture, we drove off to a different picnic site where the rattlesnakes had the decency not to show themselves (instead snickering at us quietly from beneath their bushes) while we ate our hot dogs, salad, potato chips and cookies.

We wrapped up the hike by playing in the playground. Yes, adults, too. There was this really great four-seater see-saw there, and the parents all got on and tried to mildly hurt each other on a kiddie ride; as my friend said, This is what you call extreme sports once you become a parent. We were laughing it up and had little idea what the kids were doing. They could have been playing with rattlers, feeding their leftovers to coyotes...or getting smacked to the ground by another kid on a swing, which, it turns out, my two youngest were. My daughter was okay after walking in front of her swinging friend, but my poor little son got rubber burn on his face, and by his wails I was swiftly brought back to real life, cursing myself for another deficiency in parental responsibility.

So the hike wasn't peaceful, and it certainly wasn't danger or accident free, but it was beautiful and mostly enjoyable, and on the drive back into town I got to laugh again at a ludicrous sign on the side of a mountain. I suppose it's meant to direct snowbirds (retired out-of-towners who come here each year, fall to spring) to the main part of town or, perhaps - just perhaps, it's meant to direct foolish people like me to the nearest hospital with the best chance of treating that snake bite.

A little disclaimer: I, Hillary, the writer of this blog, in no way promote trying to take pictures of or attempting to get close to any kind of poisonous snake, nor do I advocate letting your children see by your actions that you think venomous reptiles are cool.  Be safe, my friends.

End of the line, end of my rope, end of the world as we've made it

I've started to take the road less traveled a couple days a week now, religiously. And I don't speak about the road in my mind; that was always a strange, meandering path that only I could ever fully be friends with, and I venture down it continually. No, I'm speaking about my now firm habit of driving to the end of the line, just like in that Traveling Wilburys song, only...not in a train.

The road less traveled begins after picking up my daughter from preschool. Her brother's asleep, and I've stopped fighting his habit of dropping out of the bustle just as we go to pick her up. Instead I've taken to ambushing friends to watch the car while I dash in to fetch my little girl. I tell her to be very, very quiet (we're hunting wabbits), and then I throw some snacks and coloring books her way over her sleeping brother's golden head, and we start out.

I have a minimum of 45 minutes to kill. I could park and read, but inevitably my little guy will wake up, and then I'll have to pitch my newspaper aside with all due haste at that first cry and hush and drive, hush and drive, hoping to heaven he falls asleep again. So I drive the whole time. I drive in a minivan with a poor engine, squeaky brakes and a bad turn radius down a promising road, hoping to reach its end and always hoping for a good result. If the road just happens to have a fetching view of my beautiful behemoth, South Mountain, it's a bonus.

South Mountain as viewed from the south

(Yes, I'd probably prefer being home writing during my mischievous toddler's naptime, but it's a no go. He no longer makes the peaceful trip from carseat to bed without turning into a little goblin of malcontent. And I can never do without that peaceful midday break.)

Sometimes I'm disappointed with where the road leads. It ends behind a shopping complex or in the private roadway of some manufacturing facility or it curves and merges with another thoroughfare. Once I was scared, because I took a lonely road west, and I had a fantastical feeling it was going to smack into the side of some sheer and intimidating mountains. Instead, the street merged onto a highway headed south into the emptiness of this desert where the Sonoran plants thin out and things get plain and ugly, and there were no stoplights anymore and no streets to turn around on, only a few fast, soulless vehicles going around my hesitant van. For the world, I couldn't comprehend where they were headed to clutch civilization's last straw. For my part I felt I was being swept away from all human warmth, from my family and my home, led astray out of Phoenix by a highway from which I couldn't escape. On that day, at last, I ended up turning aside onto an Indian reservation's private lane.

Sometimes, though, the buildings drop away, and it's not at all scary when the stoplights become less frequent. The saguaro rears its proud head, other cacti dot the brown earth and the desert scrub kisses the road. The pavement is lonely, and the road noise keeps my young one asleep. Best of best, I'm driving toward more mountains, and I just might reach their flanks before I have to pick up my eldest kids from school, or at least before my baby wakes up. As for my precious preschooler, I glance back her way in the rearview, wondering if she's satisfied with the silence, the books and the journey and whether the scenery captivates her at all.

I found the foothills of South Mountain on a naptime excursion. There the road ends; here the hiking trail begins - no wheels, just feet please.

I had hoped in such a way to approach the mountains behind South Mountain. They little resemble its friendly, expansive slopes. I don't know their names, but I look at them and think Sheer Rock; they rise with purpose from the earth's floor, peaks like arrow heads. Their color is different, less earth tone, more sky reflecting blue. To reach them I began on a fairly young highway which turned into a road with human construction on the north and nothing but desert to the south. Stands of trees with yellow blossoms lined the middle of the divided street, stark against the smoky grey of the mountains and the unusually overcast sky.

I drove west (it's my new east) until I saw an all too familiar reflective barricade with a sign that read The Road Ends and No Stopping. The mountains were still a long way distant, the end of this road several miles shy of my destination - wilderness.

Dad off the ground, way off the ground

On the turn around back to the highway, I contemplated  power lines, their tall towers far removed from the road and their poles adjacent to it. I recalled how my parents told me that on the day Mom went into labor with me, Dad was out seeking work, and he found it in building power lines across these Western United States. That was also the day he stopped shaving and began growing out his hair, because he worked "light to light" and was often exhausted with no inclination to maintain a smooth face or a cropped mane. I never see power lines against the vast open sky or silhouetted against mountains without thinking about my Dad hanging out way above the earth with a smile on his bearded face, about the stories he told of that dangerous work, some hilarious and some sad, and of the great friends who shared it with him. The names of those friends inhabit legend for us kids because of Dad's storytelling.

A drive to the end of the road is a perfect retreat for exploring the wilderness of such memories and reflections. So thank you, my little son...for the nap, the memories and another quiet drive to the end of a line.

Short, mostly unedited post #...ah, bawoon

"Mama, hot air balloon!"

"What...where?"

"By those trees!" exclaims my sweet little Ana exuberantly as she leans forward in the backseat.

"What trees? Where?" I bark as I whip my eyes around the landscape of smog and morning traffic. "I don't see it."

I'm stopped at a light, and, I swear to goodness, this light always turns on me on the last moment. It's an Old West stand-off, and I always lose; my brakes have the scars to prove it. Plus, I've been rushing all morning, more even than most school mornings. To top it off, my daughter is teasing me with this fictional hot air balloon that I know is invisible to my grumpy eye. To see this hot air balloon I must turn into a happiness nymph or a sweet brown-haired girl of seven. I'm not betting on seeing this balloon.

But then my cynical nine-year-old boy points and says disinterestedly, "By those trees. It's right there."

Moving again, I look to my left and lo, a gargantuan balloon hangs suspended over the shopping center across the intersection. Laaaa-aahhh! If I could do a jig and maintain proper control of my vehicle, I'd do it. This is the closest I have ever been to a hot air balloon. I can see it's basket and the bright pattern on it big bulbous body clearly. It rules the southern sky, and the child within me blooms from my head.

"Balloon! Balloon! Balloon!" I shout, tapping the driver's side window energetically with my finger. "Look, Danny Sam! Do you see it?" I add, turning to the carseat behind me.

It's something he should appreciate, being an ardent fan of the much smaller variety. That love of his has often lead to what I term "balloon drama" whenever he sees one, pops one, or someone else is playing with one. He's always asking for a "bawoon, p-eezzz!" And it was a sad day indeed when his birthday balloon escaped into the great unknown of a cloudless Arizona sky. Goodbye!

Such little things bring joy and inspire longing. I've lost much of my appreciation for the ones on a string, but large flighty balloons have long had a special spot in the hearts of my children and I. When my two eldest were small, I used to take them outside very early on a fall morning. They'd play in the crisp air, and I'd jump rope in laps around our now-deceased pepper tree, working to lose some weight. I'd stop every little bit to give them piggy back rides around the yard, and if it just so happened that we saw a balloon in the sky, as we often did, we delighted in it, pointed it out to each other, and admired its lift as the smell of fast food frying floated to us from the nearest major street.

Strangely, though, this balloon on the drive to school is boldly black beneath its flashy patterns. One could think the Grim Reaper would show up in just such a conveyance outside one's bedroom window.

"It's your time, my friend," he'd say, leaning through the glass, smoothly. Then he'd smile beneath his cloak and add, "But let's go for a ride first, eh?"


But, no....hot air balloons don't belong to wraiths. They belong to children and children at heart, which is why my toddler son and I were so disappointed on our way home an hour later.

"Bawoon? Bawoon, p-eezzz?" he pleaded, gazing out the window.

"No, it's gone," I replied sadly.

But I admired his gumption in asking for a balloon he could ride in instead of merely holding by a string.

Book 4 of my dreams

He comes from the west and arises in the east,

Tall and strong, fierce as a storm upon the plain.

He ascends the height to put his hand among the stars

And wield the sword of heaven.

Master of wolves, friend of horses,

He is a Prince of men and a walking flame

- Kelven's Riddle from Kelven's Riddle by Daniel Hylton

Daniel Hylton, my dad, is experiencing a problem with a certain plot thread in Book 4 of Kelven's Riddle, a fantasy tale of Aram, a slave thrown into extraordinary circumstances when he bucks his lowly existence. The book will be delayed a few weeks perhaps, and though I can't help but understand, I also can't help but be disappointed. I've been waiting for some time now to put my life on hold, to sit like a slob in the recliner with a scone flaking and a cup of cocoa dripping on my pjs, to shout at my kids to give me a break so I can read, and truly just read, for the first time in months.

Somehow when it's Dad's book I don't feel the guilt of letting the house become a den of disorder, of letting the kids amuse themselves, of telling my husband it's frozen nuggets and canned beans for dinner - again. After all, though I may be enjoying myself, I'm also responsible for giving Dad my opinion after I read that last page of the manuscript.

But, well, why wait this time? Why wait to give him my opinion until I have that long-looked-for Book 4 in my hands? I say this with all due respect to the author and the father; I have my expectations for this story, for these characters. So, while I wait for the first 60,000 or so words to reach me by mail, I'm going to make my hopes for this tale's characters known, and here I go:

The Astra (or Guardians of the Call of Kelven)  - These incredible beings were barely palpable in Book 3. Not once did they come to Aram's aid; they did not even defend Aram when he faced the beast in the Lost, and he and several others were in real danger of being butchered for a meal. Why were the Guardians silent? Granted, Book 3 is essentially about exploration and the aggrandizement of Aram's armies, but Aram was threatened several times, and the Guardians were a no show.

     These mysterious and strangely beautiful beings so fascinate me that I really, really don't want to spend Book 4 without them, though I will if I have to. The exchange that happens between them and Ferros, a god, at the end of Book 1 and then especially that which occurs with Aram at the end of Book 2 both blew me away. The Astra are obviously more powerful than anyone we've yet seen. Bring back the Astra! I want to know they're at Aram's side waging war. It'd be great if I could hear them speak again, too.

The Lashers - flat-eyed monsters with horns curved forward over their faces toward those they mean to kill. When Aram finally learned how to annihilate them with Thaniel's help, I almost felt bad about it, because I found them immediately interesting when they showed up in Aram's village. They're a mash-up of species, an experiment born of human mothers. Perhaps there is something better for them if Manon, god of mankind, can be destroyed. Regardless, I've always found them compelling, evil or not - even the way they look sparks imagination. I see them clearly. I'd like to know more of their history and their future.

Aram - I feel I am Aram when I read the books, very strange I guess considering I'm a woman and Aram is a man. But because I feel I'm at least walking by his side, I don't think of him as being eligible to be my favorite character. Someone on Goodreads lauded him, however, as one of the best components of the book (well, one would hope so for the main character) - fierce yet humble, a warrior yet compassionate - something like that.
    Aram really isn't a muddy character like those often popular now. He makes mistakes; he has a bad temper, but he is good and working toward the good. At first all his effort is only for his own freedom, then to restore the right order to the world, and finally because he loves Ka'en. Unfortunately I feel he has a long, sad road ahead of him, and in Book 4 I want a clue about how the hell he's going to use that unusual sword he gained to destroy Manon. It wouldn't be so bad if he and Manon came truly face to face at last...well, actually - it might.

Thaniel of the horses - Thaniel, my Thaniel. I love Thaniel, and I would find it hard to say exactly why. He becomes extremely loyal to Aram after their shaky start. They are brothers in war. Thaniel is reticent by nature, but he gives council to and is open with Aram. At the end of Book 2, he needs to remain by Aram's side even in the most dire conditions and even when he is told to abandon the situation, and we understand the depth of his commitment when he finally obeys orders.

     For Thaniel, I want life, because I love this character, but I do wonder what Thaniel can become when all the war is done. To me he is a tragic figure. This is mostly do to his personality and what I feel he is willing to do for Aram's sake. It is very hard to imagine what Thaniel can be without the strife and risk of bloodshed in battle. The idea of it is somewhat reminiscent of Frodo after the ring is destroyed, though Thaniel is more imposing than a hobbit. Perhaps my dad has an extraordinary place for Thaniel reserved at the end of it all. Perhaps he'll be a family man (or horse). Anyway, his loss at any moment in the tale would break my heart, but tragedy feels inevitable to some extent.

Ferros - Ferros is as mercurial as one would expect a god over the engines of the world to be. What I want from Ferros is simple: I want him to keep the promise he made to Aram. Technically, he already kept it when Aram discovered the fellring and dragon's egg in the cave, but I want it kept in real crisis and at Aram's demand, if you will.

The Laish (or dragons) - Well, I just hope they'll be as schizophrenic and strange as they were in Book 3, and though it has already been (the evidence in ruined ships near Seneca, Book 3) and would be disastrous, I want to see what they can unleash when provoked. I feel sure they're about to be provoked.

Marcus of Elam - I just want him to stick it to his SOB Uncle Ram. Ram seems to believe that selling poor men's daughters into a vile slavery is for the good of Elam, a wealthy city, and definitely for his own. Marcus is honorable, and his uncle wants him dead. I have a feeling Marcus will bring Elam back into the light, join Aram's forces after some contention, and the uncle will be dead. I hope I'm right.

Borlus the Bear - Okay, I have no illusions here. I know Borlus was always truly a minor character, but I want him to have an impact for the good. Honestly, any way that Dad finds to use him in Aram's campaign against Manon will surprise.

Kelven - If Kelven can rise above his bitterness and do something grand, it'll be pleasing. He seems so mired in the realization of what he gave up (and for little) that effective help for Aram seems iffy. My dad meant for Kelven to be a disappointment in Book 2, surprising in his rancor and detachment from hope, and Dad succeeded.


There are many more hopes I have for Kelven's Riddle and its characters - Joktan, Ka'en, Alvern - but rather than writing them, I'd prefer to be reading Book 4 and 5 to see if my wishes for the story are valid or not. Order the first three installments on Kindle (or traditional paperback if you're like me) and anticipate Book 4 with me. Dad has promised it will be out this spring despite the small delay. Until then, I am reading his short story based on Bram Stoker's Dracula at  The View From The Woods . It's a good anecdote to the current glorification of vampires in fiction and television, back to the original monstrous tale.

Anti-vert

The day must come for us all when we have to get that first Cat-Scan. Maybe we think we're going crazy, and our doctor thinks we're irritating enough that it could just be so. Sometimes we're convinced we're dying, and the Cat-Scan seems like the proof we need. It's possible, too, just to have that inconclusive general feeling that, "Oh, my head's stopping!", as I once so famously exclaimed as a child while trying to put on a dramatic skit with my sister Annie.

My first brain scan came last Friday, and it was all in all simply because I woke up on the wrong side of the bed in the wrong way at the wrong time.

I have been sleep-deprived for the majority of my adult life, so I think I can safely say that when I tried to get out of bed at a little after 5am a week ago, it was much too early if not unusual. As for the wrong side of a bed, well I didn't really have an option. I was getting out of my toddler son's bed, and one side of it is flush against a wall, so my sole option was to sit up and sling my legs to the floor on the side with the bed rail.

The moment I attempted to accomplish the simple feat of getting up, my brain set the world spinning at crazy carnival-ride speed, and I fell back to the bed with my son in my arms, excruciatingly dizzy and closing my eyes against the funny house of distorted, whirling objects. I kept still a moment or two, thinking it a momentary dysfunction of my operating systems. Then I made another go at freedom from the low toddler bed. If I had known what I was defying, I never would have done it, but I managed to gain the cooperation of feet and legs as I stumbled into my own bedroom to peer at the fuzzy alarm clock. From there I staggered to the living room and just made it out of the hall before I fell forward to roll my son out of my arms and then fell back groaning and moaning and at full mercy of my suddenly deranged, malfunctioning brain.

That's how my husband found me. He kept our toddler son free of me, though the little guy kept reaching his arms toward me and crying out, completely discombobulated by his mother's bizarre behavior. I had to push him back and repeat, "No!" a little desperately, because it was now apparent that my body was going to be violently affected by my brain's haywire signals. I should have shouted to my little boy, "Save yourself!" Instead I said to my husband, "I'm going to be sick...."

So it went. My brain absolutely insisted that my body join it out to sea for the entire day, and it was to be no Carnival cruise. Instead I was dumped in a physiological Bermuda-Triangle with no navigational controls and despairing that I would ever make it home to solid shore again. Every movement I made, each small shift of position on this tour of travesty built into an intense nausea that had me bending over a plastic-lined trash bin. I threw up about twice an hour. I ate only half a bagel, and it did not stay where it should have. I drank water simply so I wouldn't get dehydrated and so that I wouldn't be forced to dry heave.

Thankfully, while I was lost at sea, there were those intent on aiding in my recovery. My husband came home from work when it became apparent that I couldn't drive the kids to school. Then he stayed home to tend the children while I tried to remain perfectly still on the couch. When his boss called him back into work, our very dear friend picked up our oldest kids from school and brought them home. Later, when it was evident that I could not overcome the illness on my own, there was a harrowing visit (for my man) with all four kids to our family practitioner's. When she discovered that I was experiencing an alarming drop in blood pressure and rise in heart rate each time I went from lying to sitting or sitting to standing, she determined that I should go to the ER for that first Cat-Scan.

Matthew felt certain neither he nor I would likely survive a trip to the ER with the kids, so we sent out a distress signal to some friends who abandoned dinner plans to come to our house to watch them. Here I was set to moaning about something new - the disastrous state of our home - forgetting to some degree my own sorry circumstances.

Matthew was so frazzled that when I begged pitifully for a different solution that didn't involve our friends seeing the near unlivable state of our house, he said sharply, "There's nothing to be done about it. It's the best solution," and then basically told me to close my trap. By some luck, we got to our house a few minutes before our friends, so my man and kids had time for a bit of frantic straightening. However, I feel quite sure that nothing could have removed altogether the smell of sea-sickness mingled with carpet-crushed cheerios from the atmosphere.

Ah, vertigo. For, of course, that's what it was. After a shot in the bum for nausea, a Cat-Scan, blood work, and more futile medicine for nausea, they determined no cause for it - no tumor (thank goodness), no vital vitamin deficiency, no fluid in the ear. Just vertigo - mysteriously tossing me about on an ocean of malcontent.

Until a bright ER doc decided to give me some "anti-vert" medicine, saying, "You're not going to get rid of that nausea until you get rid of the dizziness."

Yes. Amen! Illumination in the distance, a shore, a lighthouse, a miracle. Gradually after taking a little pill, I felt better sitting there in my PJs in the exam room, and my sallow, sullen face and dull eyes no doubt gained some color, depth and spirit at long last. I begged for food and was offered instead a cup of the best ginger ale I have ever had the pleasure of imbibing. Life, it seemed, would be livable again.

And so it is. The dizziness still comes and goes, haunting me like a temperamental spirit with a wrong turn of the head or a sudden forgetful flopping on the bed, but I am not nearly so ill as I was on that freaky Friday and hope never to be again. People have confided in me that this strange ailment shows up out of the blue for no reason, stays several months or a few years, and then usually disappears as strangely and as suddenly as it came. It's a chess game where the brain says check every so often to the body, keeping it at its continual mercy.

Still, this unwelcome vertigo taught me some things. I have now a new-found and intense respect for my brain and for all the signals it conveys to my body all day long with no special attention from me. It is a beautiful thing...and a terrible thing when it betrays us.

And it hit home profoundly, that which Count Rugen tells Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride. "Get some rest...if you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything," he advises before flashing his one-two smile from one self-interested psychopath to another.

Lastly, I learned to trust family and friends when things hit the rocks. I don't know what we would have done without our friends since the nearest relative is several hundred miles away. As for family, I must give a shout-out to my eldest son. He was enormously kind while I was so ill and became my young nurse. Every time I went to get up, he reminded me gently, "Slow, Mama, slow..." When I said I needed water, pitifully, and then tried to go get it, he said, "No, Mama. I got it." Whenever I got dizzy and fell back or was sick, he exclaimed in alarm, "Are you okay?" Most mercifully, he kept his siblings out of my hair. In short this nine-year-old child of mine who requires so great an investment of my resources and energy as a mother gave me it all back with interest when I was down and out, and I thank him for that.

And I thank God that I am a normally healthy person who had one sorry abnormal day.

Knight and Kind Stranger, Rescue Me

Sometimes you need a hero, whether he's trying to put the kids to bed or not, and if he can't gallop up to you on his tall white steed, nowadays you can usually reach him by cellular.

I didn't plan on being a lady in distress that night. No, I planned on simply going to a small artsy theater in the affluent city of Scottsdale, Arizona to see an Iranian film with a couple of friends. This small theater I had been to twice before, but I couldn't quite remember how to get there. Instead of looking it up on a map before I left, traditional or Internet, I decided to wing it, fully expecting to recognize the necessary turns I needed to take when I met them. (Yes, I don't have a smart phone. I'm probably the only person on the planet who doesn't have one and lacks the insatiable desire to acquire one.)

Everything in Scottsdale was supernaturally dark when I turned off the highway and headed west that night. Either that city is inhabited by ritzy, uppity vampires who work diligently to maintain their ideal nightlife environment or my uncertainty and poor eyesight made me acutely aware of the absence of any familiar guiding light. I became irrevocably confused between two streets - Goldwater, Drinkwater...huh? I made a wrong turn and then another. Then I circled back to the main street, so that I could yet again take the wrong street to the wrong fluorescent lights that glared like a false, malevolent and mocking beacon. I knew my east, west, south and north, but I had no clue about local landmarks. Everywhere I looked there were fancy low-light clubs, tall dim buildings, fancy (vampire?) people, and I was often sandwiched on the main thoroughfare between sleek, gargantuan hummers and tiny, haughty sports cars which almost careened off my back bumper when I stopped abruptly at lights.

My anxiety grew as the car's clock dialed toward 7pm. That was the showtime for the movie, and I needed to make it before then, because I knew my artist friend did not like missing her previews.

There was hope...until I lost it somewhere on Camelback, Fifth Ave, Goldwater, Drinkwater, Indian School...bleh, it was all a terrible mess. And the darkness was cruel, cruel! I began to twitch at every light, slapping the steering wheel and shouting, Come on!", rushing to God only knows where only to get more confused. The stress of being lost was eroding my practical self, and emotion was seeping into the brain, muddying my already muddled faculties. At one point I considered calling into cars that stopped next to me at lights, pleading for directions from their drivers, but I couldn't tell if that was rational or lunatic.

I didn't have my friend's cell number, and I didn't have the cell of our friend who was joining us. My panic was intensifying as I passed the same little strip of shops that seemed to be the only light-emitting things in Scottsdale. There was only one thing to do.

"Matthew, I'm lost!" I cried into my phone. "And I can't reach Holly. I'm going to be late, and she'll miss her previews. And I keep making the wrong turns, because it's so damn dark. I can't see anything til I'm right on it! Stupid Scottsdale!"

He tried to calm me, so he could clarify my damsel in distress circumstances. After much back and forth and cursing from the damsel (me), he extracted from me the street where I was and name of the theater where I was supposed to be. While he was trying to look up my location, I panicked and hung up the phone, thinking it was taking too long and hoping by sheer dumb luck or by magic that I could finally find my way. Unfortunately, I had lost all sense of where I had begun. And as I was doing another lap, my man called back, asking if I had yet figured it out. Upon my emphatic No!, he told me which way I should turn to make contact with civilization, and I turned the opposite direction (being already in the wrong turn lane). By this time it was after 7pm, and I was desperate. I turned back at the next road and then sped down a pitch-black and absolutely indifferent residential street that made me feel as if I had been inked out of existence. A radar sign flashed "Slow Down - Slow Down" like a ghostly refrain to Matthew's "Calm down!" I braked and tried to breathe in some common sense.

"Everything's so dark! I just need to come home," I sobbed, defeated. "I don't know where I am at all. I'll never make it in time."

"No, you need to go to your movie and have fun," he vowed. "Especially now. If you take a right at the next street, you'll be fine. Goldwater splits off from it."

I took the right, kept right, and then had the panicky feeling that I was again lost as the lane I was in curved away and up into the dark as if taking me to a highway.

"I took the wrong turn again!" I blubbered into the phone in absolute despair, my body shaking violently with freely erupting emotions.

But, no. Lo and behold, on a small hill to my right emerged a vaguely familiar set of red and blue fluorescents, and this time the beacon was sincere, the harbor clear.

"I'm here; I'm here. I found it!" I exclaimed in joyous relief.

"You're there?"

"Yes, thank you, honey. Thank you, thank you so much."

You're not running?" my knight asked after he heard the car door slam. "Don't run."

I wasn't, but my voice was still quavering with emotion as I walked to the ticket window with my wet face and my stricken eyes.

"It's been...a rough night," I said haltingly to the young lady behind the glass. A gentleman in a dark suit and glasses to her left glanced up as he sorted through receipts or cash. "I got lost on the way here. Have two women come through...?" The young lady was gave me a blank stare and raised her shoulders, so I suggested desperately, "One of them was named Holly..."

"Really, I have no way of knowing," she said, but upon my request she gave me leave to look for them in the lobby.

Of course they weren't there, so I asked the lady taking tickets for permission to scout them out, and I promised to come back and pay for my ticket if found them.

In the theater where A Separation was the feature, previews were no longer playing. The movie's opening scene was running, and everything was again dark and impenetrable to me. I had no hope of spotting anyone as I wandered down the aisles, and again I was feeling cursed by the lack of light, but in my dejection I was spotted. My friends waved me down from a center row, and I exited quickly and returned to the ticket booth once more where there were now six or seven people in front of me in line. I would lose more precious time, so I took the opportunity to call Matthew back and let him know I had found the girls.

"Good," he said. "Now get some chocolate to make you feel better. But not that fancy Scottsdale kind! Not the $50 a bar variety. Tell them you want the $20 chocolate."

I laughed at Matthew's joke, and in doing so I felt so much love for this man who could deal with me while I was sobbing and hysterical and, yes, rude with fear over a silly little trip to the movies. And not just deal with me, but treat me with love and kindness while rescuing me and guiding me, then make me laugh after.

As I was hanging up the phone with my Knight, I glanced up to find that the man in the dark suit and glasses had emerged from the ticket booth and was near me.

"Your friends are here?" he asked.

"Yes," I said and smiled.

"Then, here," he said, extending his hand and a stiff bit of paper. "It's on me."

"Thank you!"

I thought he was indifferent to my rididulous plight when I'd seen him earlier beyond the glass, so I was stunned as I followed him through the doors and past the lady taking tickets. My simple thank you did not seem to suffice for this wonderful act of kindness and generosity. For heaven's sake, he had redeemed Scottsdale by his action!

As he turned away toward the offices behind the concession stands, I called again, "Thank you...thank you so much..." but my voice broke as the tears surged back in gratitude.

"You're welcome," he said, and added over his shoulder, "That movie's not going to make you feel any better."

He was right. It was a movie about things falling apart, kind of like my night. Still his generosity did make me feel better, as did the love, strength and calming influence of my man. The boisterous laughter that a friend inspired in the parking lot afterward did, too. Then I finally let go completely over a very belated meal with my artist friend after the movie. We shared wonderful spinach/artichoke dip and great conversation about our high brow soap opera, Downton Abbey, and our super steady and long enduring husbands.

Afterward, I made it home just fine.

Love...true love, Bennet, and the best bouquet

I love my husband, and so sometimes - as crazy as it might seem to some with our 10 years of marriage - I pine for him during the day. Yeah, I said pine - especially if I'm bluesy, dejected, mentally malnourished. The pining starts pretty soon after he walks out the door in the morning, as do my preparations for his return home. Before I shuttle the kids to school, I put on more makeup than just a dash of color on the lips or cheeks, and I hope it holds til evening. I dress in nicer clothes, even my heels; though I know with running after kids, they'll have reached their time limit a good few hours before I see him again. And I think about him. It's not some lame dependency. I just know what will cheer me up - his conversation, his humor and his touch.

Luckily, today as I thought of him, rubbed vigorously at the eye makeup badly irritating my lash line, and wiped perfume samples from the Wednesday paper on my wrists, I had a romantic CD to listen to, something that reminded me of My Man.

The CD has Lady Gaga, Amy Whinehouse, Carrie Underwood, Michael Buble (Matthew calls him Mr. Bubble), and k.d. lang among others, and they are all singing duets with Mr. Tony Bennett. Matthew surprised me with this collection of music after we watched the recording sessions on PBS and realized that Tony Bennet has a remarkably good, strong voice for a man of his years; he can still carry the standards so well. And the songs are some of the music I love so very well but listen to so seldom - the swing with your baby around the living room or dance cheek to cheek in the dark variety.

If you still believe in dancing cheek to cheek with your lover instead of romancing phone to phone, Tony Bennett Duets II could be a V-Day treat. Sure, it could use a few more swings songs, but The Lady Is A Tramp w/ Gaga is fresh and fun, and Don't Get Around Much Anymore w/ Buble is spot on. Buble's voice is of course perfect for just such material, and I've come a long way to say that. I have a natural disdain for any man who confesses in an interview that his female fans throw their underwear at him while he's on stage, but, well....I heard him sing I'll Be Home for Christmas for the tree lighting ceremony in Rockefeller Center a few years ago. I was so impressed with his simple, poignant rendition - nothing new, just brilliant in its clear simplicity - that I have not looked back since. I'm a Bubble fan (though very far from the underwear-throwing kind).

There's also a song in the Bennett collection that reminds me of a very special day for My Man and me. The song is Blue Velvet. The day was Christmas Eve 2000. As we sat in his rental car outside my parents house, Matthew leaned over and whispered in my ear, "I love you." To which I whispered back, "What...what did you say?" You can imagine his joy at my response, but the point is that I was wearing a long blue velvet dress when he said those words, and then said them again. Though the song Blue Velvet is sad, it reminds me of my first true I love you.

Approaching Valentine's Day has me thinking about that profession of love and about love generally and the tokens of it, especially flower bouquets. Men have long given women these perfect emblems of beauty judging by the very old songs with lyrics like "flowers for my lady's hair...". Nowadays, these divine gifts from nature are most likely to be genetically altered for color and length of life to the detriment of their gorgeous scent, and they are very often delivered to the door by some online floral affiliate in some exotic bouquet. The chosen flowers represent, as best the man can tell, the nature of the woman he loves. I've received a fair amount of bouquets from my husband. Some, like my perfect little square vase of daffodils, given for an anniversary. Others, like the many bright gatherings of daisies from the supermarket, given simply because I'd had a tough day with the kids (those arrangements have stopped coming; I suppose I complain too much now).

Passing our wedding picture yesterday, I was reminded of how my wedding day bouquet was not quite me. It was perfectly round, smaller, comprised of roses which though absolutely classic have never given me palpitations. My dear sister made it for me, so I am by no means ungrateful. For heaven's sake, I'm the one who opted to have no floral arrangements at all in the church for the ceremony, and I wasn't really bothered by the aesthetics of my special bouquet either. Yet in remembering how symmetrical and tame it was, I thought of how wild and free form I would have liked it to be. Then I was reminded of the best bouquet I have ever received, given to me before my marriage.

The bunch of buds came from My Man and were for absolutely no occasion at all. They were plucked from a roadside field in Texas late in the evening as Matthew was coming home from work. He saw them, thought of me, and picked them out from their abundant fellows by the headlights of his car. He presented them to me at the door where I met him after a long day apart. They cascaded over his hand as he offered them up, fragrant and wild and leafy. I was so thrilled I could barely mumble my thanks as I took them and looked up blushing into my fiance's beaming face. Wildflowers chosen for me! In my mind's eye I could see him kneeling in the dewy grass in his work slacks, pulling flowers from the earth. The romance of it is still a sweet memory.

So there is my valentine as I wait for My Man to come home today - a Tony Bennett CD, the hope of dancing cheek to cheek with My Man to it while wearing sexy if uncomfortable heels, and the memory of a bunch of wildflowers making me flush.




A little addendum: I was flipping through my wedding album tonight and had the opportunity to bestow on the memory of my wedding bouquet more than just a mere passing glance. It was not comprised solely of roses. It had purple and yellow mums with yellow roses, as well as white daisies. Honestly, it was quite beautiful to look at. Yes, the blooms were very meticulously bunched together and as near symmetrical as they could be in design, but I cannot fault my bouquet's flowers, colors, or beauty.

Also, as enduring symbols of passionate love, a dozen deep, deep red roses might indeed have the power to give me palpitations if they came from Matthew's hands.